


What's New

by Militia



Series: Star Wars Fics [10]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hurt, Jango Is Not The Clone Template, Jaster Survived Korda Six, Mandalorian Culture, Mandalorian Wars, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, clan wars, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26526412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Militia/pseuds/Militia
Summary: Jango Fett was not the template chosen for the clones. Instead, that honour lay with the mandalorian Montross dragged into the Sith's schemes, when he completed the bounty, escaping moments before Jango arrived. The consequences of this are far-reaching, and extremely personal.
Series: Star Wars Fics [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867885
Comments: 22
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

His eyes blinked open sluggishly, to bright white lights, blurred and out of focus.

He had to fight to keep them open, and to open them again. Suddenly he saw dark spots. Wait, no he was seeing triples apparently.  
Wincing, he realised his face felt numb. He couldn’t even tell if it was moving the way he was trying to make it. Was he wincing? Frowning like he thought he usually would be, or staring blankly?

The spots disappeared. Re-appeared. Blinking. The spots were blinking. Oh, right, they were eyes. Two giant dark eyes, floating?

It felt like an eternity of blinking later, before the fuzziness mitigated and he realised that they were indeed, attached to a face. A face with skin as white as the lights and walls around the being.

“l’ng ‘ck.”  
His head lolled against the pillow as he frowned. Who just spoke?  
“o’.” He did.

He clenched his eyes shut against the tingling he could start to feel itching under his skin.

“The patient appears to be recovering from the effects of the paralysis agent faster than anticipated.”  
Some how he’d never heard that accent before. That must mean they were further in toward the core. 

“Give him another dose, Tor did suggest his last few years experience could have heightened his tolerance toward our usual cocktails.”

It was weirdly high and musical. Very lilting.  
He hissed when he felt something pinch his neck.

Wait, Tor?  
“T’r? Wher’s ‘or? N’d t’ talk t’ ‘im.”

“Nala Se, the dosage doesn’t appear to be taking effect.”  
“Heighten the dosage and give him another one.”  
“Are you sure?”

“Tor. Where’s- where’s- Tor where’s- where is he-“

“Kan Wu, please administer a sedative, his distress signals are interrupting the process.”

“Where’s my son, where’s my-“  
Another pinch interrupted him, but he couldn’t even flinch, his body refusing to move.

“Please, plea- please.” His chest heaved, his words slurring as he felt darkness creep back in, two pairs of eyes almost coming into focus, before he felt himself fall back into oblivion.

Where had Tor taken him?

He drifted awake back to more blinding lights. Blinking up, he frowned, trying to remember exactly where he was, but it was hard when his brain was fighting back with a fog. His attention was quickly grabbed when a swarm of colour dropped into its field.

Eyes pinching, he mentally swore at the blurry state of his vision as it swam, in doubles and triples, and taking what felt like an eternity to creep together into a coherent picture. Blinking some more, he gave his head a quick shake to try clear it further, and a small finger poked his cheek.  
Head shifting once more, he could feel his face shift into what Jango had once lovingly called his ‘What the kriff are you doing and you better have a good reason or I’m going to throw you into the nearest body fo water like the bastard I am’ face.  
The last he’d seen him before they’d reached Galidraan, on the ship, Jango had been staring into a mirror with his face screwing up in increasingly entertaining ways trying to replicate it.

His brow furrowed, eyes sliding past the young face to stare at nothing. Galidraan. That felt like a lifetime ago now.

“Hey, Sir!” A harsher poke helped draw him out of his stressed, racing thoughts, and he forced himself to breathe, eyes sliding shut, and listened to the beeping of a nearby monitor slow and steady to a normal pace.  
Another deep breath, and he forced his eyes open again when he felt the edge of his bed dip, to the sight of a young child frozen like a startled Tooka, half kneeled on the bed and swaying back and forth in increasing increments.  
Lips twitching in a smile, he just watched, waiting, waiting, and three, two… The kid jerked when another sway back took his knee off the bed, and his feet slapped against the floor loudly, his hands pushing against the bed and causing the entire thing to shift violently to the side.

Staring at the ground for a beat, the kid looked back up sheepishly, face shifting quickly to sport a full, toothy grin, before bracing and lifting themselves back up, this time swinging to sit on top of his leg, his other swinging loosely over the edge of the bed.

His eyebrow shot back up again, even as his face remained amused as he studied the youngling.

He swallowed, preparing to speak, before wincing, the dryness in his throat making itself known.

“Here you go.”  
A straw got shoved at him, stabbing sharply into his lips and scraping against his gums painfully, before he finally managed to get around it to take a proper drink. Head falling back with a sigh, he stared up at the ceiling for a beat, before focussing back on the two kids in front of him, sporting a grin and small frown respectively.

“Who’re you?” The kid on top of him asked.  
With a hiss, the other kid reached over to smack him, face screwed up.  
“What, I just asked-“  
“Not your place to ask-“  
The kid cut him off the other one again before glancing back at him with a small frown. Biting their lip, they glanced down at the floor, the one up on bed now avoiding his eyes and frowning down at their hands curled into small fists on their lap.

“S’alright ad’ika, y’can ask.”  
“Who’re-“  
“What’s, ad-i-ka?”   
The standing kid interrupted again, this time their face screwed up in confusion, before their eyes widened and they ducked their head once more.  
With a frown, he wondered at that response.

“Mando’a. It means kid.”  
“oh-“  
“What about brother?”  
This time, the interruption came from the one on the bed with him, back to grinning with more enthusiasm at having questions answered.  
Seeing the other one building up to hiss at him again, he cut in quickly with an answer.  
“Vod. Vode plural.”  
“Cool!”

He couldn’t help a smile at the happiness and curiosity in both their faces as they crowded a bit closer.

He quickly lost track of time, but it definitely felt like it was at least a half hour, if not a full hour, of answering questions and queries about different words and aspects of his culture.  
He hadn’t felt this content, and this calm, in quite a few years, and he found it reminded him of Jango enough to get his eyes misty a few times before he got pulled out of his thoughts.

Suddenly, the two cut off their conversation, both shooting up to stare at the door in a unison that spoke of a lifetime together. They had first asked what the word for brother was.

“We have to go-“  
“The Kaminoans are coming back.”

Darting their attention back to him, they quickly jumped back and off while giving thanks, before both darting to the wall beside him.   
Swivelling his head, he tracked their movements to a small vent, open, that they must have crawled through.  
“Go, go, go,” one hissed, shoving the other through.  
Before they got all the way in, some beeping and barely audible footsteps echoing in, they shove dither way back out of their brothers grip to stare at him.

“You didn’t answer-“  
“We don’t have time!”  
“What’s your name?”

He stared at the kids, both impatient and hurried, almost cared. But both curious, even if differing levels.  
“J-“ his voice gave out, but he pushed through, croaking out an answer.  
“Jaster. Jaster Mereel.”

Identical grins were shot his way.  
“Cody,” one offered to him, before diving his way in.  
The other one stared at him a beat longer, before nodding decisively.  
“Fox.”

With that the two were gone, and he heard the grate as the vent shut over, just as the long-necks walked in. Same ones that had put him under the last time he’d been awake. Even without familiar features, after a lifetime surrounded by people of all species in armour, Jaster could read their shock that he was coherent easily enough.

“Nala Se,” one of them, almost snapped. His memory was hazy, but if he recalled right their accent was musical enough that that would count as a snap.

“One of them strode forward, deceptively quick with their unnatural seeming grace, to grab a syringe off of a nearby shelf.  
“Hey,” he tried to push himself up a bit, only for the one that spoke to reach him, pushing him to lay back down.  
“Hey, wait.”   
A sharp pinch in the side of his neck.

Where the kriff was he?

Too quickly, he felt himself fading back to unconsciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey.”

Something jabbed at his cheek.  
“Hey, sir.”

Again. He scrunched his eyes up tighter.

“See, told you he’s awake-“  
“Shut up!”

“Sir, hey sir. Wake up.”

Whispered voices reached him, sounding all too young, and all too familiar.

“C’dy? ‘X?”

“Did he just say Cody-“  
“Cody’s been down-“  
“Was he trying to say Fox?”

With another groan, he rolled his head to the side, eyes barely flickering open. Thankfully the lights weren’t on full capacity. He was sure that would have been a headache and a half.

It took a second for his eyes to focus, and a couple more blinks for him to realise he was staring into large eyes inches away from his face.  
Face scrunching, Jaster rolled his head back straight, to see two more faces further down the side of the bed, all three focussed unnervingly on him.

Wide-eyed and eerily still, the three didn’t even blink for a good few moments, before one shifted, swallowing, mouth falling open as if to try speak.

Jaster’s brain felt too fogged over to think straight, and he was surprised to find that he was, in fact, more than capable to get even more frustrated by it. Something was off with these three, and it was making his skin crawl.

His hand flopped upward, the back of it smacking painfully against the rail on the bed, as he pulled himself up a bit with a grunt, before his muscles gave out on him in utter exhaustion.

He swallowed, and winced against the pain. With a quick gasp, he looked around blearily, trying to see if there was any water nearby.

The kid closest to him perked up with a small “oh!” Before darting back a few steps to a the same vent Cody and Fox had dived through before. Crawling through up to his torso, he wiggled back out, brandishing a small packet triumphantly with a wide grin, before running it back over to him, ripping into it.  
“Here you go sir.”

The water was shoved into his face, causing him to go into a coughing fit, one hand reflexively coming up to grab the drink and take control of the flow.  
Catching his breath, Jaster took careful sips from it after, before forcing himself to put it down, head dropping back against the pillow.

Why was he so tired? 

“Thanks,” he muttered.

He was too tired to keep track of the whispering the three did after that, until another finger poked his cheek.  
He opened his eyes, peeking out the corner of them rather than turning his whole head, to look at the kid staring at him with a determined set to his jaw, and a stubborn pout on his lips.

“Yes?” He drawled.

“You’re the one who taught Cody and Fox some of the, uh, mandora, right?”  
Jaster let out an amused huff around the curve of his smirk.

“Mando’a.”

“Man-do-a.”  
The kids mouthed it out a few times each, nodding with it, until they looked back up at him expectantly. They really were too cute. Looked younger than Cody and Fox had.

Sighing, Jaster forced his protesting muscles to move, pushing himself up into a sitting position slowly, until his back was up against the wall behind him. He took a second to breath against the faint pain echoing through his temples, before rolling his head down to raise a brow at the three kids.  
With a grin, the middle one climbed his way up onto the bed, ignoring the hissed warnings and attempt to pull him back down, until he was sitting cross-legged on top of Jaster’s feet.

“What do you want to know?”  
The kid furthest down, after narrowing his eyes at him in suspicion, cautiously climbed up as well to sit behind the other one.

The third kid scowled at them, seemingly set on staying on the ground.

“We want you to teach us more.”  
His other brow joined his first as he stared at the kid in front of him, caught in a little contest for a few minutes. Jaster was impressed when the kid started to waver, only to take another breath and steel his resolve.

“Alright,” all three shared glances, grinning, “But you’ve gotta be more specific ad. Do you want to know more about the language? Or do you want to learn more about mandalorian culture?”

He bit back on a grin when the one still beside him perked up at the latter.

All three seemed to stall though, unsure how to proceed. Rather than leave them floundering, Jaster pulled his thoughts together.  
“Mandalorians, are a culture. We’re a people that follow a creed. The Resol’nare.”

The three, he had to admit, were very cute in all their wide-eyed wonder, mouthing at the unfamiliar words to try learn them.

“The Resol’nare, speaks of six commandments all Mando’ade must follow, to be considered Ha’at Mando’ade, or True Mandalorians. Different from Kurs’tad, or Death Watch, or the New Mandalorian movement which relies on pacifism.”

Jaster lost himself for a bit, feeling his strength slowly returning as he spoke. Of the True Mandalorians, of rescuing his son, of family and commitment, of a title he wasn’t sure he deserved but was determined to do his best with.  
The kids slowly grew more comfortable, asking questions, sounding out words. But no matter how excited they got, their voices never seemed to go higher than still being softer than a normal speaking voice, and Jaster got the idea they probably weren’t supposed to be with him right now, but he’d never been one to turn away curious kids.

Eventually though, he stalled, before finally asking.  
“Do you know where I am? I don’t remember recognising the species of the ones looking after me the last few times I woke up.”

The three shared another look, but this one seemed charged. Like they weren’t sure what to say. Or maybe, weren’t sure if they could.

It was the little ade beside him that took a breath and answered, drawing himself up to his full, short, height, a stubborn tilt to his jaw and a dangerous glint to his eyes.

“Kamino. The longnecks, they’re the kaminoans. The only other ones here are us, the vode,” Jaster smiled at the integration of what he’d taught Fox and Cody last time,” and the trainers.”

“Trainers?” He frowned, confused.  
Another look.

“They, call themselves Death Watch,” and now Jaster understood why they’d seemed to recognise that name, “They’re in charge of making sure we’re ‘fighting fit’-“  
“We’re gonna be part of the best army in the galaxy!” The one at the foot of his bed broke in, throwing himself up over the kid in front of him.

Jaster found himself smiling good naturally at their enthusiasm, all the while wondering who the hell was training kids this young to be part fo an army.

He coughed, distracting the two on top of him from their squabbling.  
“Tor Vizsla wouldn’t happen to be one of these, trainers, would he?”

More shared looks, except this time they also took turns opening their mouths’ s if going to say something, and either stopping, or shaking their heads at eachother.

Jaster, really, didn’t think he liked this.

Then the lights turned on, and he flinched from the burst of pain behind his eyelids, eyes screwing shut against the bright.

Three gasps, and a mad scramble, and Jaster could tell all three were doing the same mad scramble Cody and Fox had done last time. What the kriff did these Kaminoans do to make these kids so scared of them?  
He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

“Move!” One of them whispered, voice edging on hysterical.  
Somewhere, something beeped, and suddenly those weird, lilting tones of the longnecks reached them, muffled by distance, but echoing through the halls and room.

Jaster reached out, finally blinking black spots from his vision, to grab one of them by the shoulder as gently as he could in their rush.  
“What’re your names?”

There was barely any hesitation from these three.

“Hevy,” and the first one was gone, and he heard as the kid bounced along the walls before quieting.  
“Fives,” the second one grinned, before crawling quickly after him, much quieter.

The other one glanced back at him, hesitating as something flickered over his expression.  
“Echo.”

If Jaster hadn’t been listening, he probably wouldn’t have heard him, his voice small and quiet compared to his brothers.  
Smiling back at him, he was pleased when he got a quick quirk of the lips in return, before he too, joined his brotehrs, disappearing into the vents, the grate swinging shut.

Jaster pushed himself up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. A jolt went through him when his bare feet touched the cold floor, but he quickly got over it, prepared to demand answers if necessary from these Kaminoans.

Then he realised, he couldn’t just hear the longnecks.  
A kid was crying.

Brow furrowing in concern, Jaster forced his unsteady feet forward, weight pitching, until he pulled his balance in. Swaying lightly, he moved, stumbling toward the door where, out in the corridor, there was an upset kid.

The muffled voices finally became clearer.  
“-econditioning might not work this time, if it’s already failed before.”  
“The product does appear to be stubbornly faulty, would a change in batch help?”  
“Possibly-“  
What the kriff? Why were they having a conversation about product when a kid was right there, needing help?

“Decommissioning might be the best option, if the product fails again-“  
“No,” the piercing shriek hit something deep inside Jaster, driving him forward with renewed intent.  
“No! Please! I’ll be good, I’ll be good!”

The Kaminoans raised their voices, quoting some banthashit statistics or kriff, and Jaster was worried about the fact he couldn’t tell if they were genuinely trying to help the kid or just continue their conversation over his cries and screams.

He finally reached the doorway, and pushed himself out just in time for the small group to have to pull quickly to a stop.  
He glared at them, before his eyes found the kid, blonde, red-faced, with his cheeks still wet from tears. He cursed mentally, the ad couldn't have been older than 12 or 13 at most.

“What, the hell are you doing here?”

One of them might have sighed, before their eyes flickered to glance behind him.  
Jaster barely has a second to react before something stabbed into the back fo his neck, a long arm reaching around his chest to steady him as he stumbled, shaking his head to try clear it from the fog quickly rolling in.  
“Hey,” the group went to move past, and he lashed out showing an arm back to dislodge the grip around him, and slamming a shoulder into the lead figure, before grabbing the kid in his arms, and pulling him back with him until his legs gave out and he hit a wall, sliding down onto the ground.

Small arms gripped onto him desperately, and screaming started anew when he felt them try pull the kid out of his grip. It tore his heart to pieces to hear.  
He pulled back.  
“Hey, stop! Leave him-“ another prick hit his neck, and his arms started to shake with the effort to not drop them.  
“No, nononono, Stop!”

“Please!”  
His cried mixed with the kids, until finally they stopped pulling, and the ad fell back into his arms sobbing,  
“Please,” he whispered, near tears himself, from stress, and the strain of trying to keep his eyes open.  
“Please.”

“Taun We-“  
“It’ll do no good to stress out the test subject. If he feels that strongly we can just return the product and monitor it for it’s behaviour. Any other discrepancies and we can return to decommiss-“

Jaster felt his arms go lax, and he started to slide sideways down the wall.

He was unconscious by the time his head hit the floor.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any improvements in writing is all due to Reyiosa here on Ao3 for Beta-ing this chapter for me. Really awesome job, and I definitely think it improved it heaps from what it started out as.

The next time Jaster woke up, it was for minutes, if that. His head was heavy with a drugged haze, and his mouth felt dry and full of cotton.  When he shifted, he might’ve felt steel around his wrists.  He thought he could hear voices, raised and abrasive. Harsh accents, prim ones, and the lilting tones he’d started getting used to hearing every time he woke up.  He wasn’t given enough time to figure out what was happening before something cool trickled into his arm through a small pinch in the elbow, and the world around him faded again.

Then, like a splash of water to the face, Jaster shot up, waking up with a shock. Gasping for breath, panting, he glanced around, eyes barely focussing long enough for him to get a general layout of the room, his vision swimming nauseatingly.  Squeezing his eyes shut, he forced himself to hold his breathing, to try to slow it down and get it under control. The silence felt suffocating. Stifling and oppressive without any humming or buzzing from machines or electricity. No voices or footsteps or any kind of presence nearby that he could hear except for his own heartbeat. His quick breaths almost seemed to thunder in his ears in comparison.  Chest shuddering, muscles shivering and quaking, he ever so slowly felt all the tension being to subside enough for him to try to breathe normally.

Panting out his next few breaths, Jaster finally opened his eyes again, his vision finally sharpening enough for him to assess his surroundings against the dull aches in his temples.

It wasn’t the room he’d woken up in the past few times. He also was no longer hooked and wired up to any nearby machinery. The walls were dark, rather than white, and the cot he was in actually held some semblance of comfort. Nothing felt familiar.

He glared down at his hand. It was still curled tight as stone around the rail of this bed, from when he’d startled awake.

What had woken him up?

Frowning, he searched around the room again, turning his torso to look every which way he possibly could.  Then he remembered how the kids had been getting in the last few times.  He started looking for vents and small entrances that could have been used. Nothing on the walls beside him, like there had been in the last place.  He didn’t see anything around the roof either, though he wouldn’t be surprised if the dim lighting was hiding something in plain sight from him.

Taking a deep breath, and slowly wrenching his fingers off the metal pole they were wrapped around, he swung his legs over to the side and pressed his feet into the cool ground to try steady himself.

Eyes falling shut, he took a few moments just to breathe, to try to re-organise his thoughts, and to figure out what he remembered from the last time he was awake.  All he could really remember was panic. A blinding, and deep, primal… fear? No that didn’t seem quite right.  Whatever it was, it had been enough to send him straight into fighting mode when he woke up this time. Unless… had he woken up before? Since then? Between then and now?  With a grimace, he shook his head. He needed to focus. There was no way for him to get those answers right now.

The door swung open. He flinched back against the light that filtered in and found its way through his head.

“Oh, kriff-“ The door hissed shut, the person it had opened for apparently staying outside the room.

It hissed open again, but this time the area outside was dimmed as well, lights turned down to be manageable.

A head poked it’s way in through the door to look at him, but Jaster couldn’t quite make out features. The lack of light, and apparently still blurry vision, all fought against him.

“Sorry about that, didn’t think you’d be awake for another half-hour or so yet.”

A weirdly familiar voice spoke up, coming closer as the figure approached him slowly.

“How’re you feeling, sir?” The accent, the tone, the pitch. Everything about it just screamed familiarity. It was eerie.

Still disorientated, Jaster blinked up at the man, who had finally come close enough for him to get a good look at his features.  He couldn’t help but stare, and wondered what exactly he’d been given to make him have a fever dream with this much clarity.  In front of him, a younger version of his face frowned down at him, lips twisting in concern.

“Sir?”

“Uhh, right, yeah, I’m uh, I’m fine,” was what eventually stumbled out.

_Incredibly disorientating_ , he decided, _seeing his face give him the exact same unimpressed glare he used to give Jango after the kid had done something spectacularly stupid._

“Right,” the man responded after a pause,, before tapping away at the data pad Jaster had somehow not noticed he’d been holding in his hands.

“Well, your blood pressure’s fine, and there don’t appear to be any lasting side effects from the carbon freezing if the fact that you’re already awake and sitting up is any indication. We’ll just need to monitor you to see if there’s anything long-lasting that might have been missed in any preliminary checks and reports.”

Jaster felt like his thoughts were simultaneously going a mile a minute, while also having slowed down to a stall.

A soft beep, and another few taps of the pad, and the other… man? hallucination? dream?… man nodded decisively before telling him to stay put, and that a chief medic would be along soon to take him through a few more tests and monitor his condition.

Left alone once more in the dark room, Jaster dropped his weight down, leaning his elbows on his knees and wringing his hands as he tried to get his thoughts in order.  It would help if he knew what kind of order he even needed them in. Or if it mattered. Does he need to try to get his thoughts together if he was just hallucinating?

The door hissed open again. This time, the man that came through flicked on the light before striding up to him, brisk and sure with his movements, his footsteps echoing lightly through the unsettling quiet of the room.

At least his eyes being opened for the last several minutes meant the bright light didn’t feel like it was piercing his brain anymore. Just impossible to completely open his eyes up to.

“Alright, sir,” the man sighed, “My name’s Kix, you are currently in the care of the 501st legion, under command of General Skywalker, after we were fed intel by a reliable source that you were the”—he quickly scanned the pad in his hands—”unwilling template of a cloning project undertaken by the Kaminoans under the behest of one”—here, the man paused to check his pad once more before continuing“Tor Vizsla, co-signed by one, Mon-tross, and one anonymous donor whose information we are still not currently privy to. I am here to check you over for any more subtle issues your carbon freezing may have caused you, as well as to ensure you are completely stable and healthy.”

“Do you understand?”

Jaster blinked at him dumbly. “Cloning, project?”

“Yessir.”

“Right, right,” he mumbled to himself, gaze sliding away to stare aimlessly at the floor.

“Wait.” He glanced back up. “You said, Kaminoans?”

Kix paused briefly, body stilling for a split second before resuming its small natural movements.

“Yessir.” There was something bitter in his tone that immediately drew Jaster’s attention.

He was too confused to wait for answers, regardless of the consequences.

“Do you… You wouldn’t happen to know a.. Cody, Fox, Fives,” he found his eyes screwing up, gaze fixed on the ceiling as it flicked back and forth trying to remember all the kids’ names. “Echo, Hevy.. and, and there was another kid, blonde, that they were.. they said they were going to—” he pinched his eyes shut, trying to remember the wording the long necks had used.

“Condition? I think it was?”

He looked back up into sad eyes, and felt his stomach drop a bit as Kix sighed heavily, before grimacing.

“Re-conditioning?” Kix’s tone was carefully measured. Too even, and too neutral, to be a casual kind of question.

Nodding slowly, Jaster felt more and more worried as the medic pinched at his own brow, cursing under his breath, before taking another deep breath in.

“Unfortunately sir, any cadet that underwent reconditioning around the times we’ve roughly been given for when you’ve woken up, they would either have graduated under a different number, or possibly failed under it and gone for decommissioning.”

“What the kriff is decommissioning?”

Kix’s lips skewed sideways, and Jaster had to drop his eyes to glare heatedly at the door behind him. All he could remember was that kid’s terrified screaming as they clung to him. Knowing that they’d been scared for their life, knowing that his presence likely hadn’t changed a damn thing, broke something deep in his heart that still wished he could save adi’ike from that kind of pain, where he couldn’t save his son from it.

His son.

His  _ son _ . 

“Jango.” He’d last seen his son on Galidraan, in the mess that was the massacre led by a group of Jetiise.

“Sir?”

Brown met brown as he stared, this time with a new desperate kind of fear.

Jaster needed to know. He needed to see if his son was alive. Surely he made it out. He must have. Jango was one of the strongest young men Jaster knew, he had to have made it out of that mess. Had to have come for him if Jaster was suddenly awake more free than the last several times he’d regained consciousness.

“My son, where’s my son? I need to see him.”

Jaster tried to stand up, but his legs gave out on him, and only Kix darting forward saved him from falling face first into the cold ground. He couldn’t bring himself to care about whatever potential embarrassment the move could have brought him. Not when he was so close to his adi’ke. 

“Please, I need to— where is he?” 

“Sir—“

Jaster fought against the hands holding him, uncaring if it meant he fell. He just kept trying to move, too get to Jango, wherever he might be in this place.

“Please!” He couldn’t tell if he shouted or if it came out a hoarse whisper. He could barely hear anything over his heartbeat thudding through his ears. Was Jango hurt? Why wouldn’t they let him see his son?

“He’s not here!”

Jaster pulled up short, breathing heavily. He was slowly lowered to rest on his knees, the medic crouching in front of him.

“We’re on the  _ Resolute _ . General Skywalker’s command ship. Jango’s not here.”

Jaster’s brain slowed as it tried and failed to take in all the information it had just been given, fixating solely on Jango’s absence like an open wound.  Two heavy hands on his shoulders helped ground him. A shaky breath filled his lungs as he shuddered.

Then, “You.. You didn’t tell me about the others. About if you knew the others.”

Another deep breath. He counted to three, and let it out.

“I know them.”

He blinked his way up through the tears clumping his lashes.

“Cody’s Marshall Commander of the 212th Legion. Under command of General Kenobi.”

_ Deep breath in, through the hitch in his chest, count to three, slowly let it out. _

“Fives, Echo, and... Hevy, were all part of the same squad. Batchmates on Kamino. Fives and Echo are currently ARC troopers serving under Captain Rex of the 501st, serving in this legion.”

Another breath.

“Commander Fox, is stationed on Coruscant, as the Head Guard for the Senate, and the Chancellor of the Republic.”

Another breath, before he could find his voice. 

“What— what happened to Hevy?”

“Died, while stationed on Rishi Station, when Separatist droids attacked and overwhelmed them. Fives, and Echo were able to get out with the help of Commander Cody and Captain Rex, by taking out the outpost, and stopping the droids.”

“Separatist?”

The medic frowned at him, suddenly cautious, and Jaster immediately grew apprehensive, wondering what he was about to be hit with.

“Sir, what year do you think it is?”

“I-I’m not sure, couldn’t be more than maybe, 7937 C.R.C?”

Kix drew back from him a bit, hands holding a bit firmer onto his shoulders, eyes remaining focussed with the full force of a soldier, and a medic's attention, searching his own, as if to check if he was prepared for what would come next.

“Sir, the year’s currently ‘56 C.R.C. And we’re in the middle of a galaxy wide war between the Republic, and the Separatists.”

Jaster’s brain slowed to a stall, before grinding to a complete stop.


End file.
